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Friday, September 13, 2013

DAILY TICKER: Friday, September 13, 2013

The CWB Daily Ticker is a dashboard of the most up-to-date robbery statistics possible for our neighborhood over the past year, 5 years, and 10 years.

As we've often said, our problem did not spring up overnight. It has built and built over several years. Simply comparing this year to last year misses the huge increase that we saw in 2011 and 2012. The dashboard shows the bigger picture.

Our source is the city itself, with robbery data taken from the City of Chicago Data Portal. In the event of an outage or update failure at the data portal, information is obtained from the Chicago Police Department web site. The city quarantines crime data for at least 7 days.

The complete list of 2013 robberies is here.The complete list of 2012 robberies is here.The complete list of 2008 robberies is here.The complete list of 2003 robberies is here.

The CPD realigned our area's police beats in March 2012. The lines that divide Chicago police beats literally run down the middle of their shared streets and it is not possible to know with certainty which side of a street crimes were reported on before March 4, 2012. In order to maintain consistency across all years, we have included all robberies that were reported on both sides of the border streets (Irving Park Road, Southport Avenue, and Belmont Avenue) in our calculations. As a result, our post-March 4, 2012, stats may vary slightly from official records.

Also, note that very recent crime totals may fluctuate slightly as incidents are investigated and recategorized. These fluctuations settle out fairly quickly.

5 comments:

I am coming to Chicago from Texas on a work assignment for 2 months and have subleased a condo on Aldine. I am now terrified by the crime rates in that neighborhood. If I take a taxi from the airport to the condo, will it be relatively safe or is that street crawling with thugs? Is that street ground zero for muggings? Do the gangbangers hide behind cars or bushes or how do they attack their victims? I will be working downtown and was originally told I could take the Red Line El from Belmont Avenue. Since that is no longer safe, is there another way to get downtown by public transportation? Are guns owned by licensed gun owners still illegal in Chicago? Should I break the lease and look for another place in another neighborhood? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Anonymous said...I am coming to Chicago from Texas on a work assignment for 2 months and have subleased a condo on Aldine. I am now terrified by the crime rates in that neighborhood. If I take a taxi from the airport to the condo, will it be relatively safe or is that street crawling with thugs? Is that street ground zero for muggings? Do the gangbangers hide behind cars or bushes or how do they attack their victims? I will be working downtown and was originally told I could take the Red Line El from Belmont Avenue. Since that is no longer safe, is there another way to get downtown by public transportation? Are guns owned by licensed gun owners still illegal in Chicago? Should I break the lease and look for another place in another neighborhood? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

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Welcome to the neighborhood, Anonymous. It really is a great place to live. It's simply become un-great for about 8 hours of the day.

The neighborhood changes from around 11pm to early morning hours. We have seen incidents that break out of that timeframe, but those continue to be the most troublesome hours.

Regarding the Belmont L stop, we recommend not using the Belmont stop between approximately 10pm and 6am. And we've received a lot of flack for that. Until it is clear to us that CPD has that area (the 900 block of W. Belmont) under control, we will continue to make this recommendation. The Addison stop is a fine alternative.

Regarding the muggers methods of operation, it varies. We've spoken with scores of robbery victims and read dozens of police reports. Every one seems a little different.

Gun laws are changing in Illinois. We'd recommend consulting with the National Rifle Association regarding specific requirements and legalities before you move here.

@Crime in Boystown...Thank you very much for your thoughtful responses to my questions about moving there. I am still undecided as to my final decisions. A couple of my future co-workers in Chicago are advising me to live elsewhere and have indicated that the sidewalks in Lakeview are unsafe due to intimidating gangster types moving up and down the streets without the police intervening. When I first got this assignment, I was excited. Now I am just worried. I may try to negotiate some kind of combat pay incentive with my boss. lol. But thank you again for your reply.

To the Texan - First, I want to say, I love Texas and people from Texas are very friendly, kind people. I wish Illinois was as well-run and prosperous as Tx.

Like CWB said, the neighborhood does change after 11pm, and yes, after 11pm, the area does seem to crawl with thugs. They mostly seem to work in packs, walking up and down the sidewalk in packs, intimidating, threatening, yelling (both at each other and random people walking by), "shrieking", noisy, fighting with each other, cursing, rough-housing, etc etc.

They seem to look for people who look scared, or are by themselves.

The sidewalks are very dangerous at night. If you pull up a map, find the corner of Belmont and Sheffield. Follow that sidewalk east along Belmont, to Halsted. That entire stretch is very dangerous now, at night. From there, walk north along Halsted, up to Addison. That stretch of Halsted is "Boystown", and that stretch is also very, very dangerous at night, with thugs all up and down the sidewalk. All of the side streets along Belmont and Halsted are also now dangerous too. And, we do seem to be seeing the criminal element "exploring" areas further away from those two streets into Lakeview, so yes please be careful no matter the day or time.

Also, please keep in mind that these crimes and thugs here in LV are a relatively new thing; this was a very safe place to live for many many years. Once we get more police hired, I am confident that the area will return to "normal".